Filo YOLO

As a baker, I always like to challenge myself with new styles of baking and learn new techniques. One day I decided to pick up Filo pastry. It is a pastry known (quite notoriously 😬) for its difficulty and effort… and indeed it kills my arms every time making it with the endless amount of rolling. 😵😵 (It’s one of those thing that you might as well just buy in the shop isn’t it? 😂😂) I heard you can making the rolling process easier with a pasta machine, but it is a tad too expensive for me to get my hands on…💸💸 (Plus I have no intentions of making fresh pasta any time soon lol.) However, whether homemade or shop-bought, this thin, crisp pastry is definitely one for many delicious recipes. 😋❤️

I adapted my Filo pastry recipe from Paul Hollywood’s Spanakopita recipe on BBC food (See link here👉 https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/spanakopita_26903) Why don’t you also give it a try? 😉 Let me know what ideas you may have with Filo pastry in the comments!

Late-Night Sausages

About a month or so ago, I visited an American-style restaurant called the Fat Bear here in London. (You can read about my visit here 👉 https://tangosbaking.home.blog/2019/06/15/journey-across-the-waters/) I tried their delicious biscuits and gravy, and ever since then, I had always wanted to try to replicate this classic American dish.

Yesterday, I was feeling peckish in the middle of the night. I suddenly had this idea of making some biscuits and gravy to fill this hunger. So, I quickly leapt down to the supermarket (the closet one to me had closed already so I had to walk slightly further), and came back to attempt to make this dish for the first time ever. I followed a recipe by the Hairy Bikers (Link: https://goodfood.uktv.co.uk/recipe/biscuits-and-sausage-gravy/), though I just went all freestyle with the sausage gravy using some good-quality caramelised onion sausages, double cream (that was left from when I made my Oreo cake a few days) and some mixed spices. I also didn’t have any buttermilk, so I made my own using lemon juice and milk by following tips on this article 👉 https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/how-to-make-buttermilk/.

I wasn’t entirely sure how the biscuit dough should be like, but I felt it was wetter than it should be, so I did end up adding a bit more flour. I felt the biscuits did come out slightly denser than I would like it, but the sausage gravy was absolutely delicious! 😋 (Though it eventually did feel quite heavy as I kept on eating it after… 😅)

Have you made biscuits and gravy before? Do you have any tips you would like to share? Let me know in the comments below. 😉

Plaiting like a Pro

One of the things that make me so in awe with bread makers is their abilities to create amazingly elaborated breads. To me, unlike cakes, breads are not as easy to decorate and make it look as amazing. (And certainly it’s not my preferred discipline.) Being a big fan of many food and cooking shows (no surprise there 😆), bread plaiting is something I often see being done. Despite that, I was very unconfident in trying to do plaiting for a time though as I felt I was not particularly good at handiwork. (Heck, I struggled to learn to tie shoelaces until I was well into adolescence!)

A while ago, I finally decided to attempt to make a four-strand plaited bread. But even as I was following steps and images from my book on bread making, I was still struggling and confused by the plaiting. 😖 This was until I found a very useful video on YouTube by The Bread Kitchen. See the link here 👉 https://youtu.be/RP6j7esQyjk. By following the demonstration, it was much more straightforward with the plaiting (and thanks to my mum who helped whilst I was making it! 😂)

Why don’t you have a go too? 😉